RPi4 or RPi3 for usb dac?

Audio Gear Talk RoPieee
43

Recently I am testing EtherREGEN on DigiOne Player with RPi 3 B+ and running Roon Bridge on DietPi, usually I don’t use USB DAC on DigiOne Player, but something interesting when I attach USB DAC as below:

EtherREGEN(B side) ->(100M)->DigiOne Player->(USB)-> iFi micro iUSB3.0->(USB)->USB DAC

I can streaming DSD512 for hours without hearing any dropout, maybe the trick is on 100M connection on Ethernet port.

And chaining iFi micro iUSB3.0 helps SQ, it is better than using USB port on RPi 3 B+ directly.

44

Is anyone hearing a difference in sound quality depending on which USB port you are using on the raspberry pi 4 ? To me the Usb 2 output sounds much better compared to the usb 3.
Next to that the lower usb 2 port sounds a little bit better compared to the top usb 2 Port
Can that be true ?

45

No, it makes no difference.

46

Could it be jitter? There’s a clear difference between them

47

Been using a PI4 with naa to my Hugo 2 from any usb port. Same lack of PI3 noise.

2 Likes
48

Interesting, I’ve bought the PI4 to see how it relates / replace my Aries mini.
The Aries mini beats the PI with USB3 however via USB2 the PI is better much sounding.
Never thought that there could be such a difference in sound quality out of 1 device.
BTW, my DAC is a ARES2

1 Like
49

That is interesting. I may need to revisit usb2 for better sound. I have listened to all ports for noise as that was the biggest PI3 problem. I found them all to be quiet but I have not done critical listening on usb2.

50

Sorry, I misread what this thread was about.

51

I don’t understand that.

Yes, the Pi3’s ethernet interface hangs off of the USB bus. But USB 2.0 is 480 Mb/s. The 10/100 Ethernet interface maxes out at … you guessed it … 100 Mb/s. So, even if your audio signal saturated the ethernet interface, you would still have plenty of bandwidth to send those same bits back out to the DAC over USB.

But not even DSD512 comes close to maxing out the ethernet interface (with overhead, it’s still less than 60 Mb/s).

Now, if you had a hard drive hooked up to the Pi3, and were trying to read/write data from the hard drive while accessing the ethernet, then you would encounter a bottleneck. But audio in over ethernet and out over USB? Not even close.

I haven’t tried DSD512, but I have streamed 768/32 PCM (which is the same effective bitrate) to a USB DAC connected to a Pi3B+ and never experienced a dropout. I would love to hear from someone who actually has …

That said, given the minimal price difference, I would probably buy a Pi4 if I had to choose — a much more capable device, should I ever want to repurpose it.

2 Likes
52

Hi, are you using WIFI or Ethernet, thanks.

53

Hi,
I have the RPI4 connected over Ethernet.

54

Agree on the flirc case. I have 3B+ and 4B. The 4B runs at a temp of about 42 with the flirc case (no fan). the 3B+ in a metal case with DigiPro hat runs at about 70. So even though the 4B is known to run hotter, it runs much COOLER for me in flirc case.

55

Thanks for reply!